“I do not exactly have the paperwork on me,” he mumbled as if it wasn’t obvious he’d have the sheets locked up in his travel chest whenever they weren’t required. He could collect them easily enough, but that would only chew through more of his precious time.
Nora patted her satchel. “That’s nae a problem. And, since this is unofficial until me mum signs, we can renegotiate if me figures dinnae match yours.” She veered off to open a door that Darshan now recognised to be the entrance to the library. “Nae one will be in here at this hour.”
He followed her into the room, slightly amused. How long had she been quietly directing them here? It seemed a little too fortuitous to be coincidence.
Inside, Nora dragged a second chair over to a table situated near the window. A heavy bronze candlestick sat in the middle of the table.
“It is awfully dim in here,” Darshan remarked, his focus falling on the candle. A faint mischievous, and slightly childish, impulse itched its way through his palms. “How about a little more light?” With the snap of his fingers, a flame flared to life on the wick.
Nora jumped back, a hand pressed flat to her chest. She stared at the candle, her moss-green eyes wide and slightly muddy in the dancing light. Swallowing, she lowered herself onto one of the chairs before setting her satchel on the table and pulling out its contents. “We,” she mumbled, her gaze seemingly tethered to the candle’s flame. “We were discussing the tariff on…” At last, she glanced down at her stack of parchment. “…iron imports before you left.”
“You mean before your mother made it quite clear that she would disapprove of me being in any way involved with her son?” Darshan quipped, plonking himself onto the other chair. He propped his bootheels on the table and leant back until he had the front chair legs off the ground. “I believe so.”
Nora’s lips pursed and she frowned at his boots with a disdainful glare that his Nanny Daama would’ve been hard-pressed to match, but ultimately the woman ignored his lack of decorum. Instead, she plucked a quill and inkwell from the table’s recess. “Shall we start there, then?”
“I suppose it is as good a place as any.” He held out a hand, gently coaxing a sliver of air to brush the topmost sheet of parchment into his grasp. It was a mess of notes and numbers, largely to do with the already agreed-upon tariffs of various ore exports. The amount of coal the Tirglasian mountainside held was almost sinful. Copper, too. Whilst both were in high demand throughout Udynea, the latter was in relatively short supply.
He stared blindly at the page. Had it really only been two days since that first negotiation attempt? If Queen Fiona hadn’t been called away then, leaving him to his own devices and, ultimately, the pub where he had kissed Hamish, he might’ve spent a week here at most.
Now?
“How soon do you think you shall be able to converse with your mother over these numbers?” Surely if anyone knew how long it would take for the queen to compose herself enough to not spew filth at him, it would be Nora. He could be here for weeks, maybe even months if the woman chose to be exceptionally petty and refuse whatever agreement Nora and himself came to.
Gods willing. He may have little desire to be stuck here at the whim of one person, but what waited for him back home? The same old transparent deceptions, substandard assassination attempts and trysts that had seen him sent here. He didn’t know if being with Hamish would be any different, but the chance to try was certainly an alluring one.
He slowly became aware of the distinct lack of response from the sole other occupant of the castle library. The uneasy silence drew his gaze up from the muddle of numbers and script to the woman.
Nora still sat on the other side of the table, although she’d gone terribly stiff and her face had definitely lost a certain amount of colour. She eyed the parchment in his hand as if he held a live man-killer serpent. He hadn’t witnessed such a reaction in all his life, not to painfully simple magic. Even Hamish and all three of her sons had only displayed polite curiosity at the presence of his laughably effortless flame trick.
Relishing in unnerving someone with such parlour tricks as floating paper was considered bad form back home. Still, he couldn’t stop the faintly amused twitch of his cheek. “We could discuss the linen percentage,” he said, hoping to shake her out of her shock. “I have a response from the trade council.” Not that he had it with him. “Although, I notice little mention of textiles. Is that on another page?”
“Text—” She frowned at the loose pages, shuffling through them in a daze. “Aye, they’re here.” She lifted a page from the middle of the pile, holding it out.
Again, he extended his hand and allowed a wisp of air to slide the page from her fingers into his grasp. Sure enough, the figures for linen took up a generous half of the page with a great many percentages crossed out. One set of figures was circled. It looked like what they had agreed upon. “Everything seems to be in order.”
“You could’ve just asked for it,” Nora muttered, barely audible.
Darshan tapped the side of his boot on the other. Where to start that wouldn’t lead them down the path of quibbling over a single percent? It was one thing to be fair on the tariff over linen—and the council had given him leave to be quite generous indeed—for
